Features

Biteback, Jan 24

So many screen depictions of journalists are caricatures, or just plain
inaccurate. It’s good, then, that Spotlight, a movie about the Boston
Globe’s investigative unit of that name (like a US version of this paper’s
Insight) and its unearthing of a paedophile scandal among that city’s
Catholic clergy, accurately portrays what is often mundane and unglamorous
work.

What’s also remarkable about Spotlight, which opens on Friday, is the Bradlee
connection. The great Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post’s executive editor,
was played by Jason Robards four decades ago in All the President’s Men. Now
it is his son Ben Bradlee Jr who oversees the investigative unit at the
Globe, with John Slattery from Mad Men in the role. Spotlight is well worth
seeing.

■ Insight itself is central to a documentary film released two days ago,
Attacking the Devil, telling how Harry Evans, the former editor of The
Sunday Times, along with